How to Keep a Film on Budget and on Schedule featuring Stephen Marinaccio

Welcome back to On Production. Today we're talking about the part of physical production that determines what actually gets made, which is the budget and the production plan behind it. My guest today is Stephen Marinaccio, a long time line producer and DJ unit production manager whose credits include some really great shows like Ghosts of Beirut and Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. Steven is also the moderator behind, think probably the most useful and like engaging subreddit, which is film TV budgeting, where working production folks trade real world budgeting and planning advice.

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And most recently, Steven has helped launch Line Budgeter, a modern budgeting platform built to replace digital paper workflows. And it's really aimed at making rates, fringes, incentives, collaboration, and reporting much more dynamic and production ready. In this conversation, I'm really excited to dig into how Line producers translate scripts into workable plans, where budgets mostly

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you know, find that they're drifting from reality and then what modern budgeting should look like as schedules tighten and expectations rise. Stephen, great to have you here.

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Stephen (01:31.025)

Thanks for having me.

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Cameron Woodward (01:32.674)

So I wanna just jump right into production-based questions, because you're such an expert. Let's start with prep. Where does a line producer actually move the needle most, in your opinion? And what's the early decision that you think has the biggest downstream impact on schedule and cost?

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Stephen (01:50.749)

Good question. think aside from the the obvious answer of a line producer and their impact on the financial wherewithal of the project, you know, the line producer is the person who's financially responsible for The project from a studio or producer standpoint That's the person is making the the hard decisions on what can and cannot be afforded So aside from all of the nuances of that just the core job. I think it's also just weighing in on the HODs

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production designer, DP, costume designer, and all the different department heads that make up the crew, they can really set the tone for the project. And I think the line producer has a keen interest in making sure that that team is put together well, and like I said, sets the tone for the project in general. When other crew arrive and they see a cohesive, well-formed crew that is...

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working together and communicating and trying to do the best they can, not just for the director, but also their own department. Then I think that's one of the biggest things that I could do to sort of move the needle, as you say, on the front end and make sure that the project is set up for success. Otherwise, I think it's other little things like making sure that you work closely with the ADs, the UPM, making sure that the schedule is well put together, talking to the director and making sure that the

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Stephen (03:13.851)

the scope and feel and dream of doing this project fits the budget and making sure that like the days can be made and they're realistic talking to the director and various department heads that might have bigger actions on that day, like special effects or visual effects, making sure that those are realistic inside the schedule.

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Cameron Woodward (03:33.132)

I mean, I think that you're sort of getting to the answer of my next question, but I want to like put a pin in it and understand decisively, like what's the decision you see teams delay most often that later becomes expensive.

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Stephen (03:48.674)

think just in general delaying decisions is a tough thing. I think that the, I think a big theme that I usually have is communication and, but if I had to hone in on one particular thing, I would probably say visual effects. Visual effects is that one thing where a lot of people just say, well, we'll fix that in post or we'll erase it later, or we'll add that in later. And there's a lot of times I found just standing on set, listening to someone just say that, that if I just give a

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pause for a second and say, actually, if we just take five minutes and move this over here or move that, we could fix that. And now it's done, baked into the project. so I guess that's the biggest thing. Doing your breakdown of visual effects also, it allows you to make better decisions, have an open dialogue with your director, production designer. Do we need to extend the set digitally or what if we just change the angle and talk to the DP and say, actually, that would totally work?

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Right, so you can get a lot of stuff sort of answered by, again, a main theme is communication, but also just thinking through what you really need to do. And if it does need to be extended, what are the elements that are needed in that extension or to extend cleanly? If you're shooting down a street, you need to change signage because you have to modernize or de-modernize a location.

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those are decisions to make. Well, which signs do you actually have to have the art department do? Which signs can be visual? And if you talk that through, then you have a dialogue with the visual effects department to know, here's the scope of that shot. So making those decisions later on the day, I think, makes it more difficult. And I think that's an area that can become very expensive very fast.

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Cameron Woodward (05:34.392)

I love it, Stephen. I mean, for me, I love, love hearing your perspective on this stuff because it is at the core of why this podcast exists from On Production, which is what you've just described articulates, I think so beautifully, how creative your role is in getting a movie made. You know, from the budget, of course, goes into scheduling too. And one of my really good friends here at Wrapbook, Herman, he's the founder of Cinapse, which is...

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the scheduling side, you after budget schedule. And like he's articulated like, yeah, guess what? Like if you're doing really emotive scenes for the actors, you maybe don't want to do those at the beginning of the day when like then there's going be a comedy sequence later. Cause like these are people that need to act and be in character. And it's like abstracting that away from the actors within the schedule, thinking about it related to signage.

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Like it all has to come together. It all has to align. It all has to make sense to tell an amazing story. And that is a really challenging creative task to do. And then your canvas is a budget. It's like, it's so awesome to hear your perspective on that because it, just goes to show like every layer in the process of production is so creative and so challenging and so incredible. That's awesome. You know, when you start a new budget, what's your

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order of operations for turning a script into a plan you really actually trust. And not just that you trust, but then, yeah, your AD team trusts, your director trusts, your organization trusts.

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Stephen (07:04.477)

Sure. Well, any project that I'm given the script for and asked to do that, I usually first read the script for fun. I try to enjoy the story. I really try not to think about the details of what I just read meant, my gosh, that's complex. I just try to read it for fun. And then on the second reading, now I dig into the details of it. I start marking it, tagging all the things that need to be pulled out for the schedule eventually.

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Stephen (07:33.31)

If I have access to a director or producers, there might be major things that I might bring up and ask, like, how do you see this working? Or when this character does this thing, do you want that to be real? Where are you considering potentially shooting it? can make some offers and thoughts of where this might be well-placed, but do you already have something in mind? And that way it allows me to form not just the budget, but also the schedule into

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fitting into where the director and producers have already dreamed of where it could be. So if they're really intent on shooting something in, I'm making this up Thailand, but Thailand may not be the right place for that scene. What if we did a second unit or additional unit over in wherever? And this usually comes down to the idea of like, the environment itself may not be indicative of that kind of street or exterior look, or the scene that you're trying to do.

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in this country, you're going to need a lot of extras for, you need those extras to look right. And it's going to be hard to find enough of those extras in that country. So, and there's, there's dozens and dozens of those kinds of decisions. So, so once I've read the script now and I've broken it down and done all the details, then it's set to schedule, put it into a one line, rework it so that it has a flow very similar to what you just said is, you know, perhaps the actors that have to do an intense or intimate scene.

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You don't do that on day one. You want to get those two actors actually to know each other and trust and feel something that you can do that later. That said, I've also worked with directors who are very adamant of doing major big huge things on day one. That person was very adamant to the idea that the crew is out to in in that person's words, impress me. So why not do the biggest thing on day one? Because everybody's focused on day one. Nobody's really focused on day three.

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On day one, they're focused on day one. So let's do the most intense thing, the things that need the most prep on day one. I think there's some wisdom to that. And then in other cases that may not be the best thing because that takes a lot of extra prep and you always have to balance the prep with what the realities are of what you need to do. And maybe it's a location issue, maybe it's a cast issue. So maybe you don't do that, but putting together that one line and having that flow from day to night, there's that natural progression of starting in the morning and.

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Stephen (09:59.262)

having the calls later throughout the week. Those kinds of things you need to know and think about what are the turnaround needs that you need for actors? Do you have kids in the scene? What are their working hours? All these kinds of things, animals, boats, all those elements that might make up the schedule have to be thought through and detailed out as what's my plan for that. You can't just say, well, we're going to shoot that on this day. And it's like, and if other people are saying, yeah, but what about bop bop bop? It means you haven't really thought it through.

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Stephen (10:28.593)

So having to think that through and quite honestly, having the experience to understand these are the things you need to think about and consider. That's that goes into building that schedule. And then once the schedule is made, now you have all the elements and the information to then put it into a budget and assign numerical financial values to that. And, and then of course, if you're working in other countries, working with those production services companies or other people to make sure that you're honed in and focused on what is required in those places.

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Cameron Woodward (10:59.726)

Steven, I'm curious, what are your fastest reality checks that the script and budget are aligned?

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Stephen (11:06.897)

I think it goes back to that idea of the vision, the scope of the project and making sure that the director and the producers are in agreement. Sometimes they're not and you're the mediator and sometimes they are, but also just understanding that that scope is there. So when it comes to making sure that things can be realistic, I think again, it comes down to that vision. If the director is articulate in understanding and explaining what they want and the

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and the department heads also are understanding what they want and there isn't that scope creep, then I think that everyone can be focused on what they need to do and make sure that they can make their days and understanding that as far as the pace of the schedule and making sure that again, you can make your days, that you can do the things and also not only just the pace of the schedule and making your days, but also understanding that in that day, that particular shooting day, that everybody also understands what's happening.

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Cameron Woodward (11:42.414)

Mm.

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Stephen (12:06.481)

We should get to this shot somewhere around two o'clock. The ADs should have already paced out the day, days before to make sure that people understand when do I need that element? When do the extras have to be called? When do the wardrobe people need to have people pre-called in order to dress those extras? And then the litany of other aspects to a shooting day that have to be thought through and how does all that stuff stack together with everything else? So transportation, locations, all those things have to be symbiotic and understanding of each other.

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Cameron Woodward (12:29.708)

Yeah.

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Stephen (12:35.451)

And I think as a line producer, are that sort of maestro and that orchestrator to make sure that all those communication bits are happening.

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Cameron Woodward (12:43.15)

Absolutely. I love what you were saying earlier, which is like, if there are a lot of questions and you do not have answers, you probably didn't do enough homework. I think that's a really smart stress test. I'm curious though, are there others like, you know, before shooting starts, are there, you know, two or three variables that you really like to stress test before, you know, you get going? Because what I'm, guess, trying to figure out is what's the earliest sign that the plan is too optimistic?

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Stephen (13:12.893)

Sure. I would think in general, if I pick two or three, would say background extras, turnaround times, as I mentioned before, and probably the special equipment. Those really key things that are only coming in for a day or two that you have that are very expensive, that are only working on that day, and maybe even have special crew coming in to operate those items. I think that if you haven't thought through those details, it could become

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chaotic really fast and then suddenly be more expensive because you have to extend that time or we're gonna use this crane for an eight hour minimum day and you Nuzzle it right in that eight hours. Perfect But if you suddenly are doing other stuff that creeps that over into nine or ten hours now You're paying overtime on that. Did you or did you not budget that? but also goes into the issue of the the turnaround times as I said and how that also equates to like makeup and hair if they have to get an actor into the chair how

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How much do they have to do prosthetics or is it just makeup or is it some beauty makeup for a female actor that has bigger hair or something that might take longer and have you thought through the time that they have to be in prep in the makeup hair trailer and then go into wardrobe and then be ready for set. So some actors can do all of that in 15 minutes, some take two hours. And as long as you know that ahead of time and think through that and how does that again domino effect other people.

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makeup and the hair that has to be there for two hours, which means that I need to bring someone from transportation in earlier than that, which also means location earlier than that. And then because an actor is there, an AD has to be on set. And if an AD is on set, who's feeding all this stuff? Do I need to bring in catering for an early, all these kinds of things envelope and, and coalesce into having to think through all those things. But then you go forward. What does that mean? I called in all these people early. Do they have to do an NDB or do I have to

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budget for the idea that they can't NDB and they have to take meal penalties. Do I talk to them ahead of time and make sure that they're all cool with this is the plan? know, all of those things, again, communication, it really comes down to that. hopefully that answered that question. There's so many nuances, right? So yeah.

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Cameron Woodward (15:26.754)

Variables are all over the place, which is actually one of these things that I was just curious about. Like off the top of your head, if you could only fix one variable to protect the shoot, which one buys you the most safety?

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Stephen (15:38.962)

Fixing one variable. If I think it would be difficult to honestly sort of generally say one thing can't change. Right. And because then I think you put yourself into the category of being inflexible. And I think that's one of the real sort of benefits of being a line producer and being that sort of orchestrate orchestration all, you know, coordination of everything.

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You have to be flexible. You can't fix one thing and just say, this is rigid and it can't ever change because that's the first thing that that's going to change. If you put stick a flag in the, in the ground on something that says this will never change, it will definitely be the first thing that changes. but if I, if I had to answer it more, esoterically, I would say what I would love to fix is contingency. I often find that, if I'm lucky enough to do a show that has a contingency for it.

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I find that producers will say this line, we'll just take that out of contingency. And I think that is a horrible methodology because if you are already earmarking money in contingency, it's part of the budget. It's spent. Don't spend your contingency before it's actual contingency. Leave your contingency for, I don't know, contingency. So making sure that you have that fixed amount and keep it safe and really use it if needed, when needed.

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I think that would be a key thing that I would try to focus on. Yeah.

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Cameron Woodward (17:12.504)

That's awesome. So on Reddit and the film TV budgeting community, hi everybody on film TV budgeting. You've talked about locations looking cheap on paper and then getting expensive fast. What are the most common hidden costs and what's the one scout question that surfaces the true cost early?

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Stephen (17:32.962)

I think that the key thing can be wrapped up in logistics. I think that if you are standing on, you're on a scout and you're standing on a place and you turn to your location manager and you're like, where are the trucks parking? And the moment they say, we have a lot that's three blocks away immediately. And no, have to spend tons of money in shuttles, drivers, extra catering on that day or days that we're going to be there.

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What's the time period that I need in order to get the crew over to that place? How many vans or shuttles do I need? Because then, you know, when we break for lunch, it's that whole last man rule. So how fast can I get 183 people over there? Do I need to do a satellite catering area here for people that really can't leave set? So I'm going to feed 50 people here, but everybody else has to go there. Do I do a double line at the place? Like these are all questions that you have to come up with, which I think that it's one of those things where like.

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This is the most perfect spot, but then I just turn a little bit and go, not really. or things like, and this, this happened just recently. I was in a country doing a scout and my director and I get into a car and we're driving and we're just chatting about schedule and the script and some scenes and whatever. And then we, we both kind of at the same time, look at our watch and it's been like 40 minutes we've been driving. And then we were like, wait, where is this place? And the driver was like, it's like another 15 minutes. And both of us were like immediately no.

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And we agreed it could be the most perfect visually perfect spot. It's not great for production logistics. That means that on the day I have people traveling at least an hour and probably slower because they're in big trucks. We're in a little car. So all those things, you know, we still went to the place and looked at it it was neat, but logistically a nightmare. So we were able to luckily find places that were sort of just, you know,

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relatively speaking around the corner from another place we were filming now we keep the base camp at one spot so that also helps the that expense so I think logistics really comes into play Yeah, I think that's the that's the key thing there Yeah

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Cameron Woodward (19:36.271)

You know, Stephen, it's interesting, you know, like, and again, this is going to be the most outlier example in the film industry. But, know, Chris Nolan, he wants to shoot on a glacier for some weird planet, that location is very expensive and very far. And so I'm curious, what's your threshold for deciding this location isn't worth it and pivoting? I mean, you talked about distance, you know, probably electricity, you know, parking, et cetera, but like, what's your heuristic in your bones about that?

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Stephen (20:11.725)

I think that would also not to not answer in a longer way, but I would say it also comes back to logistical support. If that place is just not totally feasible, obviously money screams yes a lot of times. Right. And your example probably had a lot of money behind it. That said, you know, I've worked on big shows too and

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And you, it sometimes feels like you have a lot of money and people look at, they know what the budget is in general, but they think, you have plenty of money. But that's the, that's the funny thing about budgets is that it's a budget, every line, every dollar is somewhere that makes up that bigger number. So for someone to come in and just say, you have to have the money. like, sure. But all that money has been assigned to various other things. So, but I can say that if, if that was in the original plan, that line producer or.

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And or UPM sat back and said, okay, what does it mean to go there? What does that mean to take a tugboat out into the middle of the North Atlantic and have it roll up on, you know, a buoy or go to some distant area to make it seem like it's really fantastically on another planet. And that's just in the plan. That that's part of that thing. So I would almost guarantee you that the line piercer or UPM, when they're reading the script, they're already having discussions on.

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What's your wishful thinking of where you want to do this and knowing that director it's real, it's visceral, and we really have to go find a place that would fit it. So, I think that it really comes back to in your example of they, they probably planned for that. So, and they just took the hit and they probably then did a lot of things behind the scenes of like, who really needs to go. What do we really need to do there? What is the equipment that is the minimum thing? Can we do pickups of other things in other places, turnarounds or other shots? So, yeah.

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That's the, think that would answer hopefully that, that aspect. Yeah. It's, it's tough sometimes.

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Cameron Woodward (22:13.454)

So moving along in the production lifecycle, so once prep is moving, how do you run or prefer to run change control so that creative shifts get costed and communicated early without slowing the team down?

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Stephen (22:28.857)

I think it goes back to that, that tried and true thing that I've said before is communication. If you have, a bunch of things happening, you definitely need to keep that communication open. And it's really, I won't say stressing or distressing, but it's perplexing sometimes when I will talk to a department head and they'll be like, yeah, and then this and that and the other thing. And, they're like, well, did you just, did you just talk to them? Cause they're right over there.

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Cameron Woodward (22:33.262)

Mm-hmm.

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Stephen (22:56.355)

No, I haven't really talked to them yet. And in your head, you want to say, but you've been dealing with this for four days and they're right there. Like, okay, hold on. And then I'll walk over and be like, Hey, blah, blah, blah. And this is that. And this person's like, what about, can we communicate or getting people together? And sometimes it's literally just calling two different departments and saying, have you spoken to that department yet? Have you just, can I set a meeting for you and put it together? And, know, maybe sometimes I have to show up and help make sure everything is fine or not. But I think that that is.

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The the essence of it and I think that by doing that you inherently control those costs, right? There's a lot of creative Bloat that happens and I think there's a lot of times where departments want to do great work Which I absolutely I agree with everybody wants to do great work Everybody's on the show to do the best they can right including me including the prop to people and the and the costumes the craft service person they all want to do great work and controlling that

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cost and that creative desire to do great work always has to be tempered with, but do we have the budget to do that? Do we have the time to do that? And do we have the budget to spend the time? Right? So all those things are interconnected.

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Cameron Woodward (24:09.934)

Related to that, Stephen, I'm curious, like, what's the simplest system? I mean, maybe, hey, you need to go talk to that person. It's the simplest system. But have you seen a system work consistently? Like, is it a change log, a weekly cost impact check-in, a budget notes, a text message? Like, what's your preference for having that on-set communication related to these issues?

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Stephen (24:34.673)

Yeah, I'm going go back to just talking. Like there are apps and methodologies and systems in place to do things, but I've often found too that email is, can get bogged down. People are very busy and they don't have time to read 30 new emails in a day or the text message didn't get through to them or they got it and didn't understand it because it was so short because text messages aren't usually very lengthy and explain explanatory. so I,

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I feel like just speaking it out and making sure that you have that human to human interaction. and having, but, that said too, there's also case to be made to memorialize information. So there's definitely the possibility of just having a discussion with someone and then emailing them to memorialize, Hey, thanks for talking to me today. Thanks for doing that thing. Here's what we talked about. I just want to put it out there. Let me know if anything changes and we can talk further, you know, those kinds of things. But I feel like.

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Sometimes emails, text messages can get lost too lengthy. Then suddenly also we've had those email chains where there's nine people on it and everybody's saying it. And then somebody hijacks that and sends it into some other thing. And now they talking about something that really wasn't the original thing. And now somebody is very confused and they're like, why am in this email chain? So I think to answer it succinctly, it's once again, it's just talking to people. even in my own email signature, I say,

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If it's important, call me, right? So I'll send an email like everybody will send emails, but if it's important, call, you know, and if it's important to me, I'll just call, you know, I want, I want that interaction. I also want them to know that I'm interested in helping, making sure that they're, they're heard, you know, they, as in anybody on the crew. So sending an email sometimes can be cold. Yeah.

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Cameron Woodward (26:26.028)

That's great advice. Once a production plan is in motion and production is change and it's change management, a lot of budgets can really start to drift in the underlying math, especially things like fringes and taxes. I'm curious from your purview, what are the most common fringe modeling mistakes you still see and what does a clean fringe strategy look like?

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Stephen (26:53.373)

for this, I'm going to go back to, used to work at, or with, 20th century Fox well before the dis and days way back. And, and one of my main, things to do there was executives would bring me into a vet, a budget. And I thought it was really great. It was a, mean, looking back on it, it was a huge learning thing. It was obviously a lot of work, but I was brought in to look at budgets that other line cruisers or UPMs had done and sort of give a, Hey,

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litmus test on it. Maybe this could be better. This needs more detail, whatever. in doing that, looking at dozens and dozens of budgets from other people, it really gave me a perspective of the right way to do things and the wrong way to do things. Right. So, and one of the things that I commonly saw, even on larger projects was this propensity to make things easy by just putting in a flat fringe and saying things like,

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these people are going to work and it's going to be 32%. Well, what they're trying to do is just make it easy on themselves because they don't want to break that into the potentially eight different fringes that are applicable to that person. And why it's super important to actually break it down is that some of those fringes might have ceilings. Some of those fringes aren't applicable to that aspect. Take DGA, for example, some

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fringes and contributions are available or are applicable to their actual work time, but their completion of assignment, it's not. So if you just put everything as a blanket of everything on that, now you're putting money into that 99 fringe account that, or wherever your fringes are set in your budget, that shouldn't really be there, which then over the course of a project, you could find is a lot of money sitting in your fringe account that could really be used for

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answering questions that the director or other departments say is like, can I have an extra camera on Friday? No. Can I do a drone day on day 14? No. But then you get, you find out later through cost reports, just like, could have been yes. I didn't know. So fringing correctly, I think is a huge thing. So that's where, when we talk about clean fringes, it's understanding what the fringe means, what it is, when it should be applied and when it should not be applied and what ceilings are and how they work.

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Cameron Woodward (29:03.5)

Wow.

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Stephen (29:17.627)

I think that's really the strategy of that and doing flat fringes is really not a good way to do it. Also, it makes downstream accounting and auditing really difficult. If you just lump all federal and state fringes into one thing, it's hard to manifest that out when you're drawing that down. So keeping everything separate, I think is the keen way to go.

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Cameron Woodward (29:41.743)

Another adjacent, similarly complex element in the budget is incentives. know, they're often treated like a line item, but they're really like a system and they need to be managed depending on where you're shooting, what you're doing. What do you need to know early in prep to make an incentive assumption realistic? And how do you think about the cashflow gap between spend and monetization?

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Stephen (29:50.909)

Mm-hmm, yeah.

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Stephen (30:10.427)

Hmm. I, the, I, I'll answer this a couple of ways. One is I think that education is keen for people to understand how incentives work. I'm sure, I'm sure you, many of our listeners too, I have many times heard producers say, we're going to go to this place and it's 30 % off and we're spending $20 million. So I should get, you know, $6 million back or whatever. Right. So,

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Cameron Woodward (30:36.034)

Mm-hmm.

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Stephen (30:39.195)

And they're like, no, that's not how that works. It's qualified spend. and then that qualified spend, if you're hiring me, I'm not from that place. I'm not qualified, right? Let's just imagine that non-local, residents are not qualified in this fictitional, example. Exactly. So it's, it's one of these things where all those things come into play. The actors aren't from that place, or at least a few of them aren't going to be from that place. The, you doing all of your posts there? Or, know, like how much money are you actually spending locally? I think that.

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Cameron Woodward (30:53.806)

Where are you based?

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Stephen (31:09.265)

That's really a keen variable that people need to understand as far as how incentives work. So getting back 10 % on $10 million doesn't equate to $1 million all the time, unless you're spending every dollar there and every dollar is good. That other aspect too, goes into, you understand that point, it goes into understanding what your base and uplifts are. So you might have places where

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You have a base incentive and I'm just making this up as a random place. 25 % is your base, but you can get an extra 5 % if you hire local crew on local crew labor. Uh, you can get an extra 3 % if you shoot in this particular town in this city. Um, you can get an extra 4 % if you shoot outside of this zone area, all those things might add up. And while that sounds really good, you have to keep in mind that. Yeah. On your.

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42 42 day shoot, you might only film in that location that gives you the extra 2 % for six days. But if a lot of people just blast that across everything for the whole shoot, and now you have too much money in that incentive bucket, which creates inaccurate incentives. So I think that the the understanding of how not only the base and the uplift works, but how that interacts with your crew, your purchases, your rentals, where are you getting things from? How are you paying for it?

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And really understanding how that all coalesces down into the incentives. You're right. It is a line item thing. Every line item contributes or detracts from that incentive. Pool. So yeah, really understanding how it works is, the, is the, is I think is the key. So, and usually it doesn't take a lot of work to understand it. It's a conversation with the local, you know, film office or production service company and asking all the right questions is making, making sure that you understand how that works. that.

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Cameron Woodward (32:48.684)

Mm-hmm.

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Cameron Woodward (32:54.03)

.

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Stephen (33:05.467)

you can try to maximize that. And also I'm to go back to communication for a second, talking to your department heads and saying, Hey, we're trying to maximize XYZ. Here are the things that I'd like you to help me think about in your department. And I think that's also a keen thing because also if crew people feel like they're part of helping out like, Hey, I did good stuff. That's, that's a boon for you as well. Right. Yeah.

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Cameron Woodward (33:27.436)

That's awesome. I have an absolutely shameless plug, which is that we have a really, really nice incentives research platform on Wrapbooks website. That's totally for free. And like a lot of the other payroll companies have it too, but we really stay on top of it. And I talked to a lot of film commissions and really, really dig in on it. So it, it, that is one part of the equation. And then the other part that you're talking about is so important to make it make sense. I mean, I was even thinking about what you were saying earlier about like, listen, if this company move is an hour away and then

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hour and a half to set up and we were chasing after some localized incentive, like that probably doesn't matter. Or maybe it does, but like you should really have the answer to that question.

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Stephen (34:06.077)

Well, that's a keen segue into the idea of I've often been asked, you know, is it going to be less expensive for me to film in? I'm just going to make this up L.A. on some show. Is it less expensive for me to shoot in L.A. or should I shoot in this other state because I get 30 percent back? And my first question is, well, how many people are you taking to that other state? The moment you take X number, well, you have to spend a lot to get there. Now you're getting 30 percent back.

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Yeah, so you're going to tell me your director and your DP and three cast people plus you plus me plus, you know, it's something you're taking 17 people that are critical that need to go and yeah, by the way, we should probably bring our editor out to during the thing. want to do that. So now you're spending four or $500,000 just to get there, just for the benefit of being there. And that, causes the,

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degradation of that incentive. So now it's not 30%. It might actually drill down to 17%. And I actually, on a side note, I did a show once where we were supposed to get about 28 % was the local rebate. And at the end of the day, we drilled it down and it was in the single digits. And no one would have been excited to do a film there in the single digits as a rebate. But we had to spend a lot of money in order to just be there.

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And so I think that the reality check always has to be given to the idea of what is my local spend? What can it be? What should it be? What does it need to be in order to then achieve that either for the studio or the financier?

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Cameron Woodward (35:39.833)

Super interesting, super great. I want to go back to a little bit of the collaboration and communication discussion, but in a sort of more myopic production accounting way. You cause you, you chatted a lot about like not necessarily doing standardization for communication, but being very explicit and open-ended with, you know, everyone from the directing team, locations, AD, production design, stunts, crafty, everybody. But I'm really curious, like what, what are your thoughts about

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the relationship between your role and then like the production accounting organization as well to keep the budget when it's actually being deployed aligned with reality.

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Stephen (36:20.417)

you're talking about the actual production accounting team or payroll downstream, the accounting. I think for.

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Cameron Woodward (36:23.726)

Yeah. Yeah. And from, from our view here at Wrapbook, like production, payroll, production, accounting, vendor spend, all flows through our production accounting software. That's how we think about these problems at Wrapbook. Like it really is monolithic, but that's not the case for all production payroll organizations. I think that they're all trending in that direction or attempting to get there so that you have visibility early on, but

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I am really curious, like aside from the tooling, like just from the communication and collaboration side, from like your purview as the person accountable to the budget and to the production, working with these production accounting organizations that are on set or even not necessarily on set, like how do you like to work together to make sure that the budget stays aligned with what they're doing and the reality of the production?

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Stephen (37:18.769)

Well, I mean, I think the best way to answer that is that I'm always in communication with at least my key accountant, if not the first, in case my key accountant is busy or doing something. Or if on that show it's big enough that I have a controller. Just depends on what level I need to talk to. But making sure that they're aware of things that might go awry. We all know about hot costs and cost reports. Obviously, I'm making a lot of notes on the set or when I visit the

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special effects warehouse or the costume warehouse or wherever the workspaces are that are then contributing to later being used on set. If I'm making notes in my head that says, we might have to spend an extra day or two with aging and dying, or we have to have an extra four people come in for construction to do more plaster work or painting, I don't just go, okay, cool, let's approve that. I'm going to be like, all right, I don't understand why you need that.

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let's approve it. And then I'm like, accountant for the cost report, let's up painters by three, three days, days or something, you know, and that could also be a text or an email, but if I can get them on the phone and talk it through, because that person, the accountant or controller might then also have some retort to me to say, no problem. can do that. Keep this in mind though, or

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Hey, do you realize that we're already $32,000 over in that thing or we're trending towards that on this new cost report last week? It was only six. We thought we could hold, but now it looks like they did this other thing. So then while I'm standing in the construction warehouse, I can walk over and say, Hey, what happened with, I'm just getting news about this. and then I can, I can sort of mitigate that hopefully in a way. So I think it's really, again, it goes back to communication. have to be on top of things and knowledgeable and.

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And also in a way, understanding of what needs to happen for the show. But when it comes to payroll or accounting itself, I think it's, it's, talking through the items and making sure that that person is sort of your right-hand, you know, partner in making sure that you're staying on budget and targeting your spend as needed as planned and making sure that that's, that's in line with that, that overall budget plan and

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Stephen (39:36.84)

keeping to keeping that information also flowing to the studio. I also am a big fan of the studio is not the enemy. The studio is there and they oftentimes have a lot of power and pull and help that they can give you if you just ask. And I say that as a former executive at a studio, there are times where I would be sitting there and I would talk to a producer or someone on a show and I'm like, why didn't you tell me yesterday? Hold on, I'll make a call, you know, and then

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Cameron Woodward (40:02.286)

Mm-hmm.

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Stephen (40:05.147)

it's very helpful. So I think that the, idea, even on a smaller scale, being a UPM or line producer and just going to your producers and saying, Hey, this is something that we might be aware of and need to be aware of and how that flows into accounting and making sure that's all accounted for. I think those are all keen, keen issues. So, for me, I work directly with my accountant all the time and make sure that he or she is up to date with potential drift, potential overspend and also potential underspend.

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Hey, we might save $3,000 doing this thing, be aware. And they'll make a note. then on Wednesday or Thursday or Friday, whenever we do the cost report, we can then take that into account.

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Cameron Woodward (40:44.142)

I have a very quick aside question for you, which is actually on that question of how aggressive are you personally or what's your philosophy of being on budget or under budget?

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Stephen (40:53.917)

It's a good question. The only thing I can say is that I'm proud to say I have not yet been over budget on any of the shows I do. And I don't say that. What is that?

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Cameron Woodward (41:05.582)

I didn't mention that before. Yeah. I never mentioned over. I just said on or under.

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Stephen (41:11.053)

On or under? I don't say that as an ego thing. I just say it as you have to budget appropriately. And I say that as a foundation to answer your question is I prefer on budget. In fact, one of my favorite accountants that I've done a number of shows with, I used to joke with her when this restaurant still existed. I said, I want to be under just enough for you and I to go to Quiznos and wrap out.

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Right. So being too far under, think is also just as bad as being over. if, if some people might be very proud of the fact that it's like, Hey, I'm a quarter of a million dollars under budget. If I was a quarter of a million dollars under budget, I would be very ashamed and like hopeful that my producers don't find out because they'll think back to all the times I said no. And they'll say, remember when we asked for that helicopter and it was going to cost $50,000.

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And you said, no, we had, we could have done it five times. Remember when I wanted to do that second unit thing. Remember when I wanted to remember we could have shot two more days. Right. So that that's not really the best way I feel to run a thing. should be right on task. I, the only story I can come up with off top of my head to answer that too, to sort of illustrate it is I was doing a show once with the director that I'd worked with before, and he made a decision that saved like $40,000.

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So for the rest of the show, kept saying, hey, on that scene, do you want to do more extras? Like we have money. Do you want to do? What if we had some more cars in that thing? What if we, do you want to, do you want to go over here and do that stuff? I kept trying to be like, how do you want to spend that? How do you want to spend that? So he knew that we had that extra money. and then the day we spent some of it, and then he was very happy to push it over to, post-production, which it needed it there anyway. the, but to that end,

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Cameron Woodward (43:05.102)

Mm.

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Stephen (43:09.859)

The reason I say this is that if you just have a bunch of money left over and you're pocketing it and then be like, look at me, I saved a lot of money. Some people might go, that's great. But I think if a studio says that you have X millions of dollars to do that show and you come in too far under, I think that that also means that they can look at you and say, well, you didn't budget properly to begin with because you could have saved us the time of sending that money off into another escrow account or.

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Even worse, if you're in a foreign land and you have to send that money through a bank, you have XE exchange fees, you have bank fees. So if you send a million dollars and it costs you 25,000 to do that and you don't spend that million, you're sending it back and you basically wasted 50 grand. Right. Roughly speaking, depending on which banks, know, me, roughly speaking. But I think that idea of being as on budget as possible is is the real holy grail. It's the real

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Cameron Woodward (43:57.336)

Yeah.

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Stephen (44:09.755)

the effort to be. when, least when I do a budget, I really want to try to make sure I'm maximizing my spend, making sure that I'm getting as much on screen as possible, achieving the hopes and dreams of all the different departments, including the director and producers, of course, but doing it in a responsible way that's fiscally manageable and in tune with the desires of the producers and studio.

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Cameron Woodward (44:35.042)

What really resonates with me on that scene is even just like the trust. Like if you're working with these teams on that third, fourth production and they've grown accustomed to your no, not actually meaning no, that seems like a huge opportunity for drama that doesn't need to be there. So that makes a lot of sense. Really smart. So, I mean, you've gotten into the game of building a tool, you know, line budgeters. So like you and Matthew Cunney have been very explicit about this that

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Stephen (44:48.86)

Right.

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Stephen (44:54.109)

True.

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Cameron Woodward (45:04.982)

You want it to address pain points like incomplete fringe handling and like clunky incentive workflows. From your perspective, what should a modern budgeting tool do that the legacy software isn't doing?

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Stephen (45:18.985)

thanks for asking. first I would, I would like to, reframe your question and I want to move it from should to does line budget or does this today. And it's that aspect of, it's, it's a multifolded thing. It's experience. Matt and I have tons of experience, real world around the world experience that we brought to the, to the table. we poured all that into it.

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the years and decades of frustration about other applications and legacy applications that people use just weren't really cutting it anymore. So at the end of the day, if you look at them, they're really just glorified calculators. They're dead information. And when you type the numbers in, it understands that it is math, but it doesn't understand the math.

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understanding how all those things link together, I think is the critical aspect of it. So that digital paper to taking from the old school 80s and earlier paper ledger that then turned into a digital spreadsheet that then turned into these applications that we've used for decades now has never been modernized. And to think of it in another way, you look at just gear in general, visual effects.

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We have the coolest cameras. have awesome lenses. We have really hot visual effects. We have all these cool tools and the grip department and electric, all these things, but behind the scenes, it feels like we're still clacking rocks together to try to figure it all out. And so Matt and I stood back and said, what does this really mean to do a budget? What is, what is the detail? What is, how does it work and how can it be more dynamic? So we took a look, really hard look at.

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how we work, how people like us really work in the real world. And it wasn't just us. We have a team of people that, that we know from around the world that said, here's, here's our wish list. Right. So we started with how we work and we expanded upon that. So when it comes to, as you say, like clunky workflows and, handling of fringes, going back to that question earlier, we took a look at, if you do break down your fringes properly and you manage that,

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Stephen (47:38.398)

How does that really affect your bottom line? How can that be better manifested into a more accurate way? Taking a look at how incentives are generated and not just like we, started, we didn't build line budget or based on what the current thought is. We, we, we based it on how producers actually work and how things actually work. So we, with experience knew that if you have to deal with incentives, you should think about these things and.

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How does that really work with the bases and the uplifts and all that stuff? So how do you build that into an engine that allows you to get that detail so that you get accurate numbers? so we have hundreds of unique items in this application that really give the power back to the line producers, the UPMs, the accountants. And also we didn't just think about this myopic world of budgeting. We also thought downstream. How does this affect accounting? How does it affect payroll? How will it affect

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auditing, what can we do now that will help later? I mean, this goes back to that philosophy that I've had oftentimes as a line producer. What can I do now in prep for film that will help my post production department? I know that things happen in post that I can help be prepared for, or even do most of the work for them early. And when I say for them, mean, prep them for success and make sure that is good. So that comes to a budget as well.

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When you're creating the budget and that financial plan and that projection of cost, there are things you can do to allow you to understand what does this mean later down the road. So we built a lot of those tool sets inside of Line Budget.

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Cameron Woodward (49:22.136)

That's great. You know, in addition to that, you know, the, the, the, flows that you're describing the engine budgeting is also an information design problem. And we've been talking about that this whole hour of just like communication, know, versions approvals, visibility, trust, and a lot of the pain points that you're describing are the same motivations and incentives that drove me and the early team to build rap book, which was like, it's, it's almost exactly to your point, led lighting.

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Stephen (49:34.109)

Mm-hmm.

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Cameron Woodward (49:51.247)

incredible camera systems and lenses, awesome post-production innovations, and very little in this very critical creative world of budget, accounting, pay all of it, right? Scheduling, it just hasn't improved. And so with that said, what does, your view, related to these like...

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Stephen (50:05.521)

Right, Yeah.

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Cameron Woodward (50:16.494)

information design issues, what does good budget hygiene look like on a healthy production? And how do you keep everyone aligned without slowing things down, really around the problem set that you're solving when lying budget?

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Stephen (50:28.125)

Um, I think it goes back to, I'm going to quote my second grade math teacher, which is show your work. And, uh, I'll go back to the lessons I learned working at Fox vetting budget after budget, after budget. Um, it's putting in too much wishful allowances, um, can get you into trouble. Um, when I worked at the studio I worked at and I was given budgets to, to okay for projects.

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Cameron Woodward (50:33.998)

Mm.

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Stephen (50:57.325)

one of the big things that I would always kick back were major lines that would just say, allow a million dollars, break that down. How do you get to million dollars? You might get to million dollars, but I want to know what's in your head, right? Understanding how that flows and how those, all those things work out because you could say. Crafts are I'm making something up. You craft service allow $35,000.

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Well, what is inside of that? What does that mean? Okay, well, that means tables and it means a setup area. We need to have some, toasters and, and all these other things. And, and then that cues me to go create. need electricity. Have you made sure, does it need a special, power outlet area because electric has to give it to you. Do they have enough stingers to get you the stuff? where is that going to be set up on XYZ location? So

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Do you, are you gonna run off house power there or whatever? Like all these kinds of things, do you have to then, do you have a unit to break down? I mean, I'm focusing on craft services at the time, but it's one of those things where every little detail means something. And if you break down those items into its pieces, I think you'll get more detail to it, to the idea of like grip gear, allow $5,000 a week.

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If you have a truck package and everything's super simple, that's great, but you can't then come back and go, but yeah, inside of that is the Dolly for two weeks that we're going to have an extra Dolly. Well, no, put that line in two weeks because I don't know how that muddles out in five grand a week. Right. So put that Dolly in for those times that you need it. And then also, by the way, that will cue to say, if you're having another Dolly on those days, do you need another Dolly grip? Right. How is that Dolly getting to and from does

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transportation have an extra stake bed to go get it, right? So all these things come into play. So I think it goes back to, um, as far as that, the design problem of figuring out a good budget and keeping it clean budget hygiene. As you said, um, I think it's showing your work, making sure that people understand when they look at the plan, uh, a one line, an 80 doesn't do a one line and say, we're going to do some stuff on this day. Right.

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Stephen (53:05.935)

A budget should also be looked at and said, I understand the thought. I understand how you're getting there. You don't look at a one line and go like, yeah, we're just going to shoot scene 14. It has the breakdown of elements in there. What, what is included in that? Right? So it's the same philosophy. it's just sometimes people don't apply that philosophy to a budget. And I think doing so would, would, would provide that hygiene and the cleanliness of making sure that everyone understands what's in your head. How are you thinking about this?

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Cameron Woodward (53:15.342)

I love it.

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Cameron Woodward (53:32.558)

I love that. I know that you check all lines before you let a budget go out the door, but what's one line item that you always double check before the budget goes out the door?

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Stephen (53:39.314)

course.

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Stephen (53:44.868)

Stephen (53:49.03)

I think that, that's a good question. I think that the one line, one line would, that would be tough. The bottom line. How about that? The bottom line of the budget is the keen thing. Is it fitting in what you are asked to do for the full budget? And does everything above it support the need to spend that, right? There are times that I've done budgets. This is a, I'll,

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Cameron Woodward (54:01.079)

Mmm. So.

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you

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Stephen (54:18.171)

be quick on a story. There were times I did a budget for a studio once where they came to me and said, we're having a hard time doing this budget. Can you take a crack at it? And I did it and they told me the target they wanted. And it was, I brought it in $11 million over that. Now that sounds horrible, but it was because the script demanded XYZ. I had a meeting with them. I had a meeting with the producers. and through my explanation of how we got there, they understood what they then needed to cut and bring it back down.

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So we were able to cut that down by about 10 and a half million. And then it was approved for a half a million dollars over their initial guesswork. So to that idea of, is the bottom line consistent with the needs of the script? Are you just making it $50 million because some producer said, have $50 million and it could really be done for 48? I think the responsible part of me would say, you could do this for 48.

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Cameron Woodward (54:48.13)

Mm-hmm.

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Stephen (55:17.819)

Just FYI, you know, of course everybody's going to say like, why did you just walk away from 2 million? But again, it's that thing of like, if I'm just throwing an extra 2 million, I don't really need it. Then I don't want to have extra money later. Right. So if there's a mandate to spend 50 million, believe me, I can spend it. It's fine. But, I think the bottom line is that responsible, you know, saying I did this plan. I'm, I'm confident that we can do it for this number and that we need this number.

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Cameron Woodward (55:33.358)

Thank

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Stephen (55:45.042)

Right? No, no studio is going to just say, well, we think it should be 40 million. Do a $40 million budget. think you should start from keeping that back of your head and just do a budget based on that script and that schedule as you, as you see fit. And if it comes over, let them understand why it's over. And if it comes under, you should understand why it's under. Right? So don't back into a number as much as, as I know that that's an industry sort of thing backing into a number, but

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often backing into numbers because you definitely don't have enough money to do what is on the page. So now you have to be responsible about what's on the page.

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Cameron Woodward (56:19.822)

I actually wanted to ask you another really quick question on that. You know, like, and maybe this, maybe you just answered it, but what's the most common budgeting myth you see newer producers believe?

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Stephen (56:33.534)

the budgeting myth.

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Cameron Woodward (56:35.234)

Yeah.

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Stephen (56:37.477)

I think that, Gosh, that's a good question. a myth of budgeting. think that the aspect of, I mean, I want to say wishful thinking that everything will be okay, that everybody will come together and just believe what you say it's going to be. I think that the, the idea of this is only going to cost this. This was really easy. A friend of mine only did that. So, this project requires X.

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The project that you did, even the last project or 10 years ago when you did something, it, it had different variables. And I think that in a way, this sort of may, might fit into that idea of, everybody has experience, right? Everybody that's, that's one of the key things that I bring to a show my experience and ability to think outside the box and understand world issues. but, even if I have experience of doing something,

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from a show a year ago, 10 years ago, the variables that got me on that show to have success might not be the same variables here. So you have to always take the, well, on this one show I did this, but here I might have to change it a little bit. So I think that potentially that answer would be the myth of everything is always the same. Here's a good one. Here's a thing popped in my head is the myth of I've always done it this way. I think those are very dangerous words for people to say.

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Cameron Woodward (58:06.776)

Mm-hmm.

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Stephen (58:06.971)

I've always done it this way, so I should just keep doing it that way. You know, I've always hired these people and they've always done this. That's good, hire those people, but they might have to change a little bit. I've always done that. I've always used this piece of software. I've always gone here. I've always hired this gear to do this thing. This project may require a little bit of rejiggering. This project may require extra people or less people, right? So,

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These are all just examples of the idea of if you ever sit back and say, well, we've always done it this way. It's, it's should be your clue to step back a little bit further and say, why, why have we done all this way?

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Cameron Woodward (58:49.344)

I love that. Here's another one. A department that consistently saves productions money when brought in earlier than people expect.

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Stephen (58:59.395)

Yeah, I love that. I mean, that sort of goes to the idea of prep is important, right? It's always the fight to have people come in earlier, right? But I also think prep is where you save money. If you can have more people, and I think this is where you're going with it, if you have props, set dressing, construction, so on, come in a week or two earlier and they have that time to figure things out, discuss with the director.

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Cameron Woodward (59:01.422)

you

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Stephen (59:27.517)

talk to those other departments and figure out how they can do it. It might on the front end feel like you're spending an extra couple thousand dollars to bring those people in. But at the end of the day, they had more time to anticipate and plan for characteristics that might happen or might come up in the project in the schedule or later. They can sit back and have the time to say, well, when we do scene 86, need to do this. So I have to go talk to these people about

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how they can help me succeed in that. you know, bringing in a DP early enough to talk to your locations people, to talk to your production designer, to know what scope you're shooting in, what kind of lenses and frame that you're gonna have and understanding this is how big my set needs to be. Set dressing then understands how much they actually need to dress and all these things mean a lot because then if you don't have a lot, people are gonna freak out and say, I have to do everything.

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And then you show up on a set and you see that the entire room has been set dressed. And then the camera is just like, yep, we're just here. Like that's, that's tough because set dressing didn't have enough time to think it through or discuss with people to say, what are we doing here? Right. They just said, well, we just have to do everything. And now I've spent an extra money doing that.

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Cameron Woodward (01:00:41.934)

Right.

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Cameron Woodward (01:00:46.382)

Follow on to that, you know, I know that every production is different, like just heuristically or like broadly, like how much time in prep for like development makes sense to you based off all the products you've done.

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Stephen (01:01:01.693)

When you say development, mean actual prep for the project? Yeah.

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Cameron Woodward (01:01:04.758)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, prep or it could even be development in some cases. But, but yeah, guess let's just focus on prep.

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Stephen (01:01:09.308)

Yeah.

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Yeah, I think you, you nailed it on every show is a little bit different, but the, general, think that you have to give enough time for those communication elements to happen. You know, always keep in mind the fact that in prep, generally speaking, your last week, right before filming is not the time to be suddenly making decisions. By that time you should have most, if not all of your locations locked down most, if not all of your cast.

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Yes, of course, there's variables here. If you're doing a show that's a hundred days, you're probably not going to have everybody, everything locked down. But if you're doing a show at 30 days or 45 days, you probably should have a lot of it locked down by that point. Because then the week before that is when you're doing your tech scouts, your production meetings at those production meetings and tech scouts, you need to be able to go look at a bunch of stuff for the crew to understand what they're doing.

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And, and usually that week, that last week before filming is then when the director and maybe cast come in early to do rehearsals, or you might have to have training for an actor, military training, or some special stunt work or whatever you might need to be doing. So, and of course that could extend earlier depending on the show, but just generally speaking. So those last two weeks are kind of not prep anymore. That is actually like. Hard, like, like you're, you're not prepping your, you're still prepping, but you're

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you know what you're prepping. Whereas all the weeks before, yeah, really, like we talk about like soft prep and hard prep and real prep and like all of it's prep, but that's like you, yeah, you really, you really honing that plan after that tech scout, usually a new schedule comes out. Usually that's when you start to lock the budget. So all of those things have to come together and make sure that they all are thought through. So.

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Cameron Woodward (01:02:34.072)

You're sort of like, you're like hardening your system.

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Stephen (01:02:59.377)

that aspect of those the last two weeks or those general things happening, which means that the weeks before that is your prep getting to that point. And you need enough time for locations to find the locations for casting to find the cast. So oftentimes if I'm brought onto a show and they're like, can we want to shoot in X time period? I will then immediately do a back time off of that and say, great, provided those are the dates you still want to do, we need to start two weeks ago. Right. And

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or that we need to start a next date. that usually also says, well, what I'm talking about is like opening the office. But before that, we're gonna shoot in these three different countries or whatever. We need to find people in those countries to start doing preliminary, even through digital archives, some scouts of what is there? What can we film there? Where can we actually be? What city should we be based in in that other country?

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or that other city and the state or wherever you're going. And that can all be done before I have to hire an accountant and a coordinator and all that stuff that can be, that can be handled ahead of time. So, and then casting should start right away. Right. So like, you know, earlier than that. So, so prep is usually like the opening of the office accounting and then starting your arch department and all those other departments afterwards in a sequence that's pretty usual, but can vary.

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But so keeping that in mind, the core question of like, is the best prep time and period? think it's you hit it nail on the head. It depends on the show, but you know, eight to 10 weeks is probably a good starting point. And then you adjust from there. Probably don't adjust down too far, but you might need to adjust further. You know, I've done shows where we've prepped for eight months. I've also done shows where we prepped for eight weeks.

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Each project is a little bit different.

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Cameron Woodward (01:04:56.31)

You mentioned something related to the schedule. I actually wanted to, and this is a can of worms, but I'm very curious if you can describe your ideal relationship with the AD department in relation to your budget and the production schedule.

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Stephen (01:05:10.833)

Hmm. yeah. Can of worms is a good thing. I think that the, say that jokingly, I think that the, the ideal relationship is a good one. It's a, it's a one of mutual trust, you know, right? I, as, as a, a DGA UPM, I, you know, I go to my eds and I'm like, we're, we're in the same, we're in the same union. We're doing the same thing. and, but I think that the, idea of.

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Cameron Woodward (01:05:22.03)

Yes. Yes.

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Stephen (01:05:40.674)

I, let me back up and say, I think that there's a lot of times in general on shows, there's an us them mentality and that us them could be two different departments. I would hate to say it's every UPM and ADs. I can't say that hasn't happened, but usually sometimes it's an us them of like this crew versus a local crew or, this department against that other department. Right. So I think that us them mentality, needs to go away.

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We're all there to do one show. We're at the behest of the director to do great work for that person. But when it comes to your question of the UPM or Lion Cruiser working with the ADs, I think it has to be a level of trust and understanding that they're doing great work. I'm doing great work. Let's do great work together, communicating on what is needed. I'm a big fan of doing new schedules as much as possible, as much as necessary.

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And I'm not a big fan and, and sending those schedules out, I should say, I'm not a big fan of an AD department that sort of says, yeah, no, no, we're working on a new schedule, but you can't know it yet. And then suddenly we have the whole crew saying, I'm not really sure what we're doing next week or sometimes tomorrow because the AD has just put out the call sheet and they're like, well, at least we'll let you know tomorrow. But this goes, this goes to that thing of like on set when I'm standing on set watching how things are going today.

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There's 200 other people worrying about today. I'm worrying about next week. If I don't even understand the schedule and the idea of what we need to be shooting next week because the AEDs are moving things around and not telling people, not communicating, that makes it really hard for me to make sure that we're anticipating what we have to do. That could be a special prosthetic or a piece of equipment that we need to get or some special crew person needs to come in or cast members that need to fly in on certain dates and fly out.

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We aren't communicating about that. Things can go sideways really fast. So again, I go back to it's communication, it's teamwork, having that understanding that's like, you're doing the schedule, I'm doing the budget, but we need to be in sync because the two are, they're very connected, right? You could shift something and an AD or a second AD is like, yeah, we'll just do that tomorrow. And if they don't understand that what they just did spent

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Stephen (01:08:07.016)

$40,000, that might not be great idea. So I think that the, that, that aspect of understanding how the money flows and how it needs, and I'm not saying you have to share all that stuff with everybody. There's things you do and don't share, but as far as from the schedule to the financial, I definitely need to have that communication open with an AD department. So, and I've been fortunate to work with great ADs often, and that communication is not a factor, but when it, I can imagine that when it's not great,

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Cameron Woodward (01:08:26.85)

That's great.

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Stephen (01:08:35.562)

it could really be a detriment.

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Cameron Woodward (01:08:38.062)

What is a budgeting habit you wish every production had by default?

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Stephen (01:08:44.241)

Hmm. I think, thinking things through, thinking things through, goes back to that show your math. I, I feel like, if budgets are well-formed, regardless of, as I said, that story earlier, if they're over where that target point is, as long as they're well put together and they explain why it needs to be over, I think that's where you can come to that, that table in that,

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the real show that I did for the studio where we met with the producers and quite honestly, they did not like me in that meeting because they thought I killed their show. And I said, no, no, I didn't kill it. I just said, this is your script. This is your script that says that dictates the budget. I could come in here and just make a budget right back into a budget that says X, but I chose to do the proper thing for the script. And I think that falls into the, you know, what do I wish that people would do is I just just think realistically, right? Don't don't.

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Don't be wishful thinking when you're planning out these details. it'll be fine. I'll just put in this money. We'll figure it out. No, no, figure it out now. Talk to people, say, hey, this is what we're trying to do. Here's what I'm kind of thinking. Does this align with what you're doing? And that goes everything from the grip department and craft service all the way to the director. You might be thinking, yeah, that'll be easy. We'll just do that. And the director is like, no, we're doing this. Right. And you're like, Okay. All right. That I'd have to realign my budget.

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to affect that because that also means I need to hire all these other people or do these other things. Is location aware that we're doing that? So let me go talk to locations to make sure that we're all cool. Right. So, I think, I think that's the big thing. Think through every line item, every line item, every dollar means something. Make sure that you understand what it means, why it's there. Should it be there? Does it need to be more or less? I think that's really the, the, the keen way to make sure that you're, really thinking through the project. Well.

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Cameron Woodward (01:10:41.634)

That's awesome. Steven, thank you so much for like really digging in, breaking down budgeting in the way that, you know, productions actually experience it. You know, not just theory, but like it's planning, risk management, day-to-day decision-making. It's awesome. And you know, like my takeaway here is like, this is about clarity and it's so cool. Like I said at the beginning, like it's really, really gratifying to see the incredible creativity that

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Stephen (01:10:44.519)

Thanks for having me.

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Cameron Woodward (01:11:10.422)

these roles have in the actual end product of our favorite movies and shows. Like it's really, really cool. So that's it for this episode of On Production. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.